The networked computing environment (e.g., cloud computing environment) is an enhancement to the predecessor grid environment, whereby multiple grids and other computation resources may be further enhanced by one or more additional abstraction layers (e.g., a cloud layer), thus making disparate devices appear to an end-consumer as a single pool of seamless resources. These resources may include such things as physical or logical computing engines, servers and devices, device memory, and storage devices, among others.
In cloud computing and shared file systems, users may store files in a storage location from which the files may be accessed using various computers and/or devices. Challenges may exist, however, in providing current metadata for such files in a shared environment. Such challenges may be complicated as the size of a given directory or folder grows, thus making it more difficult to efficiently locate desired files or readily obtain pertinent information about such files.